The Marvels (DaCosta, 2023)
I enjoyed The Marvels more than I anticipated for a reason I didn’t expect: Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel.
Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) has mostly struck me as Superman without the Clark Kent identity — overpowered and underdeveloped. It doesn’t help that her origin story in the MCU was a flashback. She has a human name (Carol Danvers) but not much of a human existence, and through most of Phase Whatever she was roaming space, living on the periphery of Marvel’s universe.
By contrast, we meet Ms. Marvel before she is aware of her powers. Kamala has a family (that appears in this movie) and a life apart from being superpowered. Based on trailers for the movie, I thought Kamala’s gushing teen enthusiasm would grate, but it turns out that it was actually a nice tonal relief from the emotional constipation that plagues a lot of recent MCU fare. (Only Guardians of the Galaxy 3 perhaps had a richer emotional palette). As should be a spoiler for absolutely no one, it looks like Kamala is being positioned as Phase Next Whatever’s version of Nick Fury, assembling the Young Avengers into the next team. Turns out by the end of The Marvels, I was grooving with that idea rather than dreading it.
The plot of this movie? Shrug. I don’t know, I’ve forgotten most of it already. Does it matter? It has something to do with unstable wormholes and power entanglements and Captain Marvel being married on a planet where you can only sing (unless you are bilingual). Also, there is a return of the Cat that Ate the Tesseract (Goose), I’m sure I will watch it all again when it hits Disney Plus and then again before the Young Avengers movie or MS. Marvel Season 2 . . . and I will still forget who most of the supporting characters are and what they did to make them matter.
In the face of that kind of mass-produced, homogenized landscape, all praise to whatever is even just a little different. Vellani injects some much-needed fun into the whole enterprise, and that makes me look forward to seeing more of her in the increasingly morose Marvel Cinematic Universe.
